Ode written on the First of January, 1794.

Poems, By Robert Southey. [Vol. 1]

The melancholy poet greets the new year in fourteen graveyard quatrains that substitute for elegiac measure the blank verse of William Collins's Ode to Evening: "Oh there are those who love the pensive song | To whom all sounds of Mirth are dissonant!" p. 52. The Ode written on the First of December 1793, a more upbeat poem in the same volume, is written in similar blank verse quatrains, octosyllabics with a shortened fourth line. In the second edition Southey changed the sequence of the poems in the volume, placing the two odes together.

Analytical Review: "Our readers will immediately associate Mr. Southey's name with the epic poem which he lately published, Joan of Arc.... From that difficult and dignified species of composition he has descended to amuse himself with these easier and more artless strains; and we are happy to remark, that the same lively fancy, the same delicacy of sentiment, the same melodious flow of language, which marked that rapid production, and diverted the attention, perhaps, from some censurable defects, may be distinguished in the little volume which now lies before us" 25 (January 1797) 36.

Anna Seward to Thomas Lister: "Southey's Ode, written on the 1st of January 1794, is in the measure of Collins's Ode to Evening, and of scarce inferior excellence. It has a striking coincidence of idea to a sonnet of my centenary, written on the 31st of December 1782. From my earliest years, evening in the piping, dancing time of youth, I never heard the bells ring out the old year, without falling into a similar strain of idea to that of my ensuing sonnet, and of Southey's ode, written twelve years later" 13 April 1797; Letters, ed. Scott (1811) 4:329.

Come melancholy Moralizer — come!
Gather with me the dark and wintry wreath;
With me engarland now
The SEPULCHRE OF TIME!

Come Moralizer to the funeral song!
I pour the dirge of the Departed Days,
For well the funeral song
Befits this solemn hour.

But hark! even now the merry bells ring round
With clamorous joy to welcome in this day,
This consecrated day,
To Mirth and Indolence.